Selection of a formal description technique (FDT) for a FDT based protocol converter

Computer networks are large and complex systems. The use of natural language to design and analyse communications protocols will lead to ambiguous representations. This inadequacy of the natural language gives rise to the many recent research works on formal description techniques (FDTs). FDTs are methods to define the behaviour of an information processing system in a language with formal syntax and semantics. FDT has been chosen as a basis for the design of protocol converter. A survey of existing widely accepted FDTs is presented. From this survey, a selection is made for an appropriate FDT to be used as the basis for future research work on FDT-based protocol converter.<>